Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 saitir Oct 17, 2008 14:10:40	Is it just me or do the D&D Staff seem to be avoiding Skill Challenges in their Dungeon adventures (not to mention published adventures)? I wouldn't go so far to say that they're promoting the D&D stereo type of being all combat and no character, but less than a quarter of adventures I've seen have even one skill challenge in them. While you can easily argue that skill challenges don't make RP, anyone who's used them succesfully in a game knows that they do draw out player creativity, add to the story in unexpected ways and make things more fun. Is this a schism in the development staff, a direct lead from Bill or the magazine editors, or just an acknowledgement from the writers that they only tossed in skill chalenges to satisfy folks who claimed D&D was nothing but tabletop battle rules? In general the content out of WotC is severly combat heavy. Don't get me wrong, I love playing my 11th level Warlord and all the cool things he can do in a fight. It doesn't mean I expect other aspects to be buried though. So instead of one skill challenge every four adventures, how about one every four encounters and see how people like it. Y'know, just for a change. And yes, I know, if I don't like it, I can go write my own stuff -- and by and large I do. But while I'm payiong my D&D Insider subscription, I expect more variety from the adventures and articles we're getting.
#2 Alter_Boy Oct 17, 2008 14:25:46	What ratio of skill challenges do you consider enough? I believe each H-Tier adventure has at least one skill challenge, most of the on-line adventures have one, and "Tariff of Relkingham" has 3 of them. http://www.wizards.com/files/158_Tariff_of_Relkingham.pdf
#3 saitir Oct 17, 2008 15:40:19	I really should be more awake when I post these things. My apologies for having a vague idea and posting before collating my information. H2 does indeed have two skill challenges - out of what... 38 encounters? One of which make slittle real difference if you fail or not. H3 has one in about the same number of encounters, failure of which just results in an attack anyhow. I don't have my copy of H1 to hand, but as I recall it had an skill challenge added as a web extra. I've not seen errata for these issued either (to update the skill challenge numbers according to the update issued on the subject. True anyone can easily figure it out, but it'd be nice if they made it easier). And the point is, the number's aren't any better in Dungeon -- the ones with more Skill Challenges aren't the ones written by the WotC staff writers, which was my point really. But yes, I put my point badly and probably should had totalled a bunch of stats rather than really on hazy gut feelings! My apologies.
#4 kouk Oct 18, 2008 3:56:12	I think it has to do with the feeling (I suspect correctly) that skill challenges are nice every now and then, but certainly most groups prefer actual fights and/or actual RP with just talking -- making the ratio very skewed. One or two an adventure being generally plenty. In general though, fights are somewhat simpler to throw together. They also engage the whole party over a longer amount of time (I find) than skill challenges, thus making the adventures "longer" in a sense -- and regardless of the makeup of the group (social skill challenges still fall flat on parties with almost zero ability to use the social skills). Unless it's really really long, and then somewhat hard to keep the tension up in, challenges seem to be breezed through in comparison to a typical combat. If you want specifics of how many skill challenges have appeared in Dungeon so far, you can check the "Hidden Gems of Dungeon e-Magazine" thread, with a link in my signature. It will be accurate except for the most recent adventure, the Ziggurat Beyond Time.
#5 kalaka Oct 20, 2008 19:58:06	Skill Challenges don't need to be "written up" in order to use them in your game. If your players are doing something that warrants a skill challenge ... run with it.